Pune,famous for being known as Oxford of the East,will now get its first literary festival,Pune International Literary Festival (PILF). Organised by city-based authors Manjiri Prabhi and Sonja Chandrachud,the three-day event will be held from September 20 to 22 at the MIT campus in Kothrud,with more than 50 established and budding authors to take part. Noted authors such as Jerry Pinto,Ashwin Sanghi,Kiran Nagarkar and Preeti Shenoy are slated to participate. Panel discussions,workshops,book-launches and reading sessions are planned,along with a focus on vernacular literature,particularly Marathi. At a press conference earlier this week,Chandrachud said that PILF was an attempt to bring literature closer to the people of the city. With Shashi Deshpande,Shobhaa De (in the picture) and film-producer Siddhartha Jain on its advisory panel,the festival will also explore the evolution of the written word,from classics to popular literature,and other media such as television,films,radio and the new media.

Wooing the Sarod

Virasat 2013,the annual festival of SPIC MACAYs Pune chapter,is hosting performances by sarod maestro Pandit Biswajit Roy Choudhury and opera singers from Norway. Choudhury was introduced to sitar and sarod by his father and later received tutelage under Pandit Indranil Bhattacharya and Ustad Amjad Ali Khan. He is one of the few sarod players who play coveted compositions from the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana. Choudhury will be performing live in a concert on September 4 at NCRA,at 6 pm,and on September 4 at Cummins College,at 6 pm.

The festival,which is aimed at inspiring the youth through Indian performance arts,was

inaugurated on August 21 with a sitar concert by Purbayan Chatterjee at the College of Engineering (COEP).

Music and Lyrics

The music for upcoming Marathi film Dhamak was launched in Pune recently. The film,which stars Aniket Viswasrao and Girija Joshi in the lead,also features Meghna Naidu and Mumait Khan doing cameo acts as they perform a lavani for the film. Directed by Rajendra Bandiwadekar,the music for the film is composed by Nirmal Kumar and the lyrics are penned by Rajesh Bamugde. Umesh Jadhav has done the choreography for the film and Sudesh Bhosle has crooned the item number Shaila Mee Shaila,which is among the popular tracks in the album.